Known for his acumen about the financial markets and the economy, money manager Jeffrey Gundlach has also gained notoriety as something of a political handicapper in recent years. He predicted President Trump’s election when most Beltway pundits were giving the unorthodox candidate little chance of even winning the GOP nomination, so his thoughts on the current political scene now attract interest.

“We’re going to have a doozy of an election in 2020” with three, maybe four, political parties, he told attendees last Thursday at John Mauldin's Strategic Investment Conference.

Look at some of the issues likely to emerge. In 2006, only 12 percent of Americans supported a universal basic income for everyone, including those who choose not to work. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have now come out in favor of such a policy that, coincidentally, would encourage more people to waste even more time on Facebook, considered a global productivity killer in the view of many economists.

Gundlach didn’t say that, but he did note that today, 48 percent of Americans support a universal income. It’s been rising at a “rate of 3 percent a year,” so it could reach 54 percent by 2020.

In his home state of California, Gundlach noted that five-term Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein failed to get the party’s nomination because “she wasn’t liberal enough.” While she may yet win the nomination in a run-off, the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party is rising and could decide to run its own candidate, one who probably would be more viable than Green party candidate Jill Stein. That candidate probably would advocate “full-on helicopter money” to an extent that might make the last decade pale in comparison.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if the more centrist Obama-Clinton wing “can put the genie back in the bottle,” Gundlach said.

Part of the Republican party may well try to unseat President Trump, he added. If they lose, they also could run their own candidate.

If there is a recession before the election, Gundlach questioned whether Trump would run since he has been touting the economy at every chance he gets. In a recession, the economy would look “horrific.”

He certainly has a point there. Millions of Americans are still dissatisfied with the economy even though unemployment stands at 4.1 percent. If things gets worse, the mood is likely to sour further.

None of the economists speaking at the event predicted a recession in 2018 as the economy is firing on all cylinders—Gundlach himself said GDP was headed higher in the next six to nine months. But several others thought a downturn could happen in 2019 or 2020.